May 2, part two: hospital window (15 minutes)

Cobbler sky, blueberries and cream and powdered sugar, slowly but surely moving toward the hospital window. Just outside, gravel mashed into the cement looks like big brown sugar granules. Farther away, across the lower rooftops, more graveled and glass buildings rise up like sugar cane. Cranes like crop thrashers pile up more buildings, horizontal lines, parking garage with no glass, or buildings-to-be, naked bulbs at regular intervals like yellow-gold rhinestones on a dark blue dress. Metal guardrails frame the tops of all the structures, helping to avoid an accidental fall, protecting the antennae and vents and padded pipes, silver and puffy like oblong Christmas presents.

Inside the window I lounge on a Murphy bed and my friend sleeps catacorner from me, black socks, blue pants, burgundy short sleeve shirt, bracelets from the hospital and one from Lance Armstrong on his right forearm; wedding band on his left hand.

Outside, a hum of engines, even here eleven floors up, the sounds of endless construction, the output of air conditioners and chemical exhaust and a passing small airplane; a bird absentmindedly runs into a hospital window -- not this one, but I've seen it happen, I know what it sounds like -- and falls between buildings and dies. An unfitting tribute to all of those inside who are fighting for life.

Inside, the ticking of saline and glucosamine on an elaborate tree of tiny clear tubes and timers, dripping the proper dose into my friend's veins. On the laptop computer the recording of Bob Dylan's 1992 tr
ibute concert. A happy crowd, that, a happier time.

On the other side of the room, through the full-length mirror-backed door, nurses shuffle around the pod, paper noises, paper being pulled from machines, paper being handled, dealt with, moved about; soft footsteps let us know we are safe inside this room.

My friend snores softly, his mouth widens slowly, his snores increase in volume. His face is puffier than the last time I saw him. He's not well but he's doing better, so I'm told. He smiles and I don't know what he's really thinking, what fear he holds behind his blind eyes. I know he's afraid, he has told me before, the last time he was in the hospital, before he was released and before he had to comeback. Leukemia. That's supposedly gone, now he's fighting the cure.

The room is bathed in soft lights and soft music and I feel heaviness in my eyes. I want to nap. I was up early this morning and drove to Houston, got here at 10:30, and now I sit for twenty-four or thirty-six hours or who knows how long.

May 2, part one: raindrop (15 minutes)

Raindrop hits the windshield like an alien being landing, its many legs splayed out on the unsure surface. Another hits a leaf, a big ivy, which bows down to let the water slide on past. The storm comes, flash flood warnings in three counties. In full force, the drops ricochet down an industrial size gutter, clip-clop, frantic, lost in the darkness, rushing out the bottom like a woman in a crowd looking for her misplaced toddler.

The dirt soaks it up, smiles at the coming deluge, the pebbles around it shiny like little cars coming fresh off the line, all white and tan and expectant. The thunder gives a stern warning that this isn't over yet. Ants drown, the dirt turns to mud, pebbles disappear in the flow and the resettling, unsettling, resettling of sediment. This used to be a walkway, a path, and now it is a river. A bug on a twig paces from one end to the other, tossed about, gripping, frightened. Excitement and dread mixed up together in a rue.

Roots of trees saturate, luxuriate, lean out, stretch their pale green-white fingers into the soaked earth. Stretch out, push up, a new growth spurt. A drink of water down here -- a gulp, a gag, a near drown, and way up there, fifty feet away or more, a baby bud extends itself further, pushes open, whipped by the wind, saturated by the water. It blooms, or moves toward it, says goodbye to the cocoon state, moves outward, unfurls, looks around and sees the shape of things to come, the other leaves, the jagged star that is a maple leaf.

The clouds above have come down to earth, have come down to visit the things they helped create, helped facilitate. They laugh. Lightning and thunder, laughter of the clouds, a grumbling stomach, a hunger, no fear, just instinct.

Everything shines, everything glistens, everything drips wet and wonderful. Forty days and forty nights of this could change everything. But it'll never last. He promised. It'll go away, the water will settle to the steaming ball of fire core of the earth, a sizzle, steam, the earth sighs, the steam goes up and rejoins old friends in the clouds, new clouds, bigger clouds, heavy clouds, dark, angry, serious. Heavy with rain, pregnant. And then a rumble, a flash of electricity and the seams rip open and the bottom drops out and here it comes, a drop like an alien lands on the windshield, all its legs splayed out---